A Swift and Scathing Resumption

I did the lace club thing and parcelled up some yarn and patterns. I've marked one of them - Fyberspates yarn and the Adamas Shawl - with the number One, but the rest will be done randomly. One effect of this has been to bring home to me fully just how much lace yarn is lying about the place - this is far from all of it, just the stuff I want to knit first - and has caused some sharp braking on the spending front. Probably not a bad thing.

I finished two more Felicity hats. This one is Drops Classic Alpaca in 4434, used double, very soft and pretty.
This one is black Drops Karisma, which seems harder than the cream Karisma that I used for the Pinwheel but that may be an illusion of some sort. I did this one on two needles instead of four and seamed it up the back, and I think that's made the increases less obvious.The black one is the last one, not the last forever but the last of all the ones I decided to do over Christmas when I was thinking, 'Oh, I could make one for X and one for Y... ' ad infinitum.

Still in the world of accessories, here's a Harry Potter scarf for a teddy bear.












Here's the Sea Silk Forest Canopy blocking. I'm not sure if I've mentioned this one before.

I'm not too nuts about it. I didn't particularly enjoy the yarn, which I found floppy although that might be my fault for using needles that were on the large side (5mm), and the colourway is fairly dull. It's Ocean but it's only blue and grey, no greens at all.

Still, I hope the recipient likes it. It's for my goddaughter and it's intended to introduce her to the idea that might like a shawl or stole for her wedding day. Or indeed a veil. I was thinking about a Pi Shawl veil but I have fallen totally for the Queen Anne's Lace circular shawl, which could be worn as a veil. In fact, I have fallen so hard that I just want to knit it anyway and I don't really care if she wears it or not. She can have it as a doily for her hall table if she likes. It has a mixture of lace and mathematics which makes my heart beat faster. The pattern (I mean the actual recipe, not the design) is interesting in that it's been written by someone who hasn't read many patterns so it does terrifying things like leaving out the plain rows (look at the numbers up the side of the chart) but innovative things like printing the word-by-word instructions side-by-side with the chart. (Is that innovative? I haven't seen it before.)

If I knew whether she was going to wear white or ivory, I would probably have bought the silk and cast on by now, although finding silk that's fine enough might have slowed me down. I want something plied (or do I mean 'thrown'?) for the flexibility: I think I will have to get my head around NMs, which sound a bit too much like NOMs for me to keep a straight face.


see more Lolcats and funny pictures

Of course I could just knit and then dye it if it wasn't the right shade, couldn't I? Couldn't I? The trouble is that natural silk isn't white so that could be risky.

My back did that thing that it does sometimes and I had to go to the osteopath. She's always very good about fitting me in quickly so I thought I'd do her an FC, this time in Kidsilk Haze. She's pale with black hair so she really suits those shades which can look a bit drab on the wrong person. This is a nice dark bark.


I started this on a bamboo Addi circ, but the joins were annoying me so I switched to an Addi lace circ. It's much better, although I have noticed quite a lot of dropped stitches - not a problem with KSH of course and very easy to detect with this pattern.

This arrived last Saturday. Simple Style by Ann Budd.
When I ordered it from Amazon it had a publication date of June, but it must have arrived early. I ordered it without seeing it because I like the sweater on the cover, and you can't really go wrong with Ann Budd, and I thought it would save me dithering in June.


The only complaint I have about it is that not all the patterns go up to my size; since they're all simple, would it have hurt to do a few more sums and work out the larger sizes?




I know I could do the sums, but there's not much point in buying a book with the word 'simple' in the title and then having to do a lot of sums, is there?

I was wandering around Etsy one night recently and came across these. Aren't they cute? They're from Paper and Yarn, and she dyes wool as well.
















She sent me this as a little extra.











More later. Not least, I still have to bring you up to date on Law and Order: UK, which I have been watching diligently on your behalf, and to catch up on comments.